A Group Selection Perspective on Economic Behavior, Institutions and Organizations

Jeroen van den Bergh and John Gowdy

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: This article examines the role of group dynamics and interactions in explaining economic behavior and the evolution of institutions. Our starting point is the large literature on group selection in the biological, behavioral and social sciences. We present a range of interpretations of group selection, describe a complete set of group selection mechanisms, and discuss the empirical and experimental evidence for group selection. Unique features of cultural group selection are investigated, and opportunities for applying the latter to various areas of economic theory and economic policy are identified.

Keywords: B52; D02; D71; Altruism; Altruistic punishment; Assortment; Downward causation; Functionalism; Group formation; Multilevel selection; Other-regarding preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-05-09
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-00695532
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (35)

Published in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2009, 72 (1), pp.1. ⟨10.1016/j.jebo.2009.04.017⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-00695532/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: A group selection perspective on economic behavior, institutions and organizations (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00695532

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2009.04.017

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().